A2LL

A2LL (abbreviation for " unemployment benefits - benefits for livelihood ") is a Web application that was developed to implement the so-called Hartz IV legislation for the collection and management of financial services for recipients of the " unemployment benefit II". The name derives from a target of the Hartz concept to put the previous performances of unemployment assistance and help towards living expenses ( " welfare " ) together. Applies A2LL in the job centers (formerly working groups ) that are responsible for the care of ALG II recipients on site. The option to work with other municipalities, decentralized software solutions. A2LL is one of Europe's largest web-based e -government solutions.

Development

A2LL was initially created by the company T-Systems and PROSOZ Herten, Herten and developed. According to a report of Hertener general, the company has taken over financially in this project and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The company PROSOZ Herten is beginning of May 2005 withdrew from the joint project. Since then, T-Systems is responsible for the product alone. The programmers of the project were first taken over by T-Systems.

Technology

On the software can be accessed via a web browser. Access to use is backed up over the Internet; access to the administration, however, only on the intranet of the Federal Employment Agency ( BA), managed by the IT system house of BA in Nuremberg.

Base are 16 servers, each with four processors, which form a web server under the Linux operating system. These form the GUI system with Tomcat as the servlet container. About the web services framework in the company Systinet 48 Windows 2003 servers accessing a server farm from the time on which the developed by the company Prosoz Herten application server is running. The application server uses Microsoft (D) COM technology. The database is Informix 10 on a Solaris machine with 80 CPUs and about 300 GB of cache RAM used.

Project History

Since 18 October 2004, the software is German cities (Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, etc. ) are available.

A2LL went on 21 October 2004 for all other cities and towns in the test run. The number of certifications was initially limited to about 20 percent of the number declared in order not to overload the system due to high traffic. By the end of October 2004 then every 16,000 users have been unlocked. To prevent overloading of the software and to ensure the timely payment of unemployment benefit II, the applications received were processed by the employees of the employment agencies in different layers in the sequence in several major cities.

23 December 2004 2.6 million benefit communities were recognized in A2LL and booked about 1.3 billion euros in assistance payments for January, 2005 the accounting system FINAS the federal agency. Today 's accounting system SAP ERP will be used.

A2LL dismissed from the outset on numerous errors that could be processed or bypassed only with considerable additional effort on the part of the evil one / job center.

Since the start of operations commencing gross errors in the software or adjacent systems were discovered again and again. Thus fell during the start of that account numbers were filled in by a downstream software from the wrong side ( numbers such as 1234567 were to 1.234567 billion instead of 0001234567 ). Payments on such account numbers remained because no customers assignable, are with the banks and savings on so-called shards accounts. Banks had to form crisis staffs due to the amount of the erroneous transfers. This error was not caused by A2LL, but by a downstream system. However, it is rated as an indication of the error rate of the central system architecture consisting of numerous, coupled IT systems with the BA.

In part one rose at the Federal Agency for the shipment of personal checks. In this case, it turned out that the software over a long street names shortened - which meant that checks could not be delivered to some extent.

End of April 2005 came the Herten Herten PROSOZ software company ( owned by the City of Herten ) in trouble and was on the verge of bankruptcy. PROSOZ Herten was involved as a subcontractor of T-Systems with the development of A2LL modules. Due to the delays in the completion of A2LL PROSOZ Herten was financially and personally completely overloaded. T-Systems funded the subcontractor. After PROSOZ Herten got out of the project, took over T-Systems from time to time the participating experts PROSOZ Herten.

After about six months of actual operation in the working groups ( ARGE ), which are responsible for the provision of benefits under SGB II, 2005 essential functions of the software were not yet available in June. There were at that time, for example over benefits paid are not charged directly in the program and the individual officers were forced to use in order to handle the case of a power complex " workarounds ". Also the production of documents is very rigid and can not be adjusted sufficiently to individual needs.

End of July 2005 it was announced that the A2LL software has problems with one-off payments. A few days later it was announced that the software registrations, cancellations and change messages has canceled health insurance for unknown reasons.

In early September 2005 it has also been known by press reports that the software since its launch 25 million euro per month too much had referred to the health insurance because the A2LL software has the meantime lower average contribution rate in health insurance not included. The sickness funds created by the latter two problems significant additional administrative expenses. Votes in the Federal Agency were heard after the software was classified as "no longer maintain and capable of development ." After only nine months of commercial operation, a devastating judgment for a newly developed software.

In February 2006 a report was published, from the with reference to a Bundestag printed paper it is clear that short-term legislative changes in A2LL can not be entered. This took several manufacturers of standard solutions that are comparable to A2LL and are used locally (eg lambs number GmbH of Munich as a reference customer, etc.) on the occasion and said that with their products (which are in the option municipalities in use ) legislative changes within could be implemented by weeks. Representatives of the CDU / CSU were according to press reports now also no longer willing to make short decisive changes in the law on the functioning of A2LL dependent. The Federal Government also stated that the use of alternative software solutions should be considered. However, the federal government acknowledged that even with these would still exist vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, the federal government has granted more calculation error of the unemployment benefit II software A2LL. Thus, the calculation of the surcharge was disturbed, the basic security recipients could obtain under certain conditions, which have been collected within the previous two years unemployment compensation.

Eliminating the most serious error is according to current plans, in January 2008, will be resolved any additional error in June 2008. Up to address all errors in the IT process A2LL the users are in the working communities of employment agency and local " error-free bypass solutions in the form of a calculation tool" available. It is a calculation aid in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (see BTDS 16/6306 ).

When transmitting messages to the health insurance it is because of the software for the transmission of false data. In addition, the contribution method several software errors lead to false temporarily contributions to the health insurance companies. These are to be corrected at a later stage.

The BA apparently no longer adheres to the use of A2LL. In March 2008, she announced that A2LL to be replaced by a new system. According to information from the BA this new software (project name " Allegro" ) will be developed in-house. With the completion in 2012, calculated with the use in " real mode ", 2013. This comes to switching to a new software on all A2LL users. In 2013, the new software is not yet used; current is expected to start in 2014.

Swell

• Failed Hartz IV software A2LL: Link list in Heise articles
• BA CEO Heinrich Alt Reuters, March 9, 2008: replace " Allegro " is A2LL